Meghan 
As the new year rapidly approaches, we’re tracking marketing trends and identifying our ecommerce media predictions for 2025… and bracing ourselves for significant shifts in the online landscape. We predict 2025 to be a year of both challenges and opportunities as digital ad spaces become increasingly crowded, economic inflation pressures marketing budgets, and emerging platforms continue to gain momentum.
For ecommerce brands, the upcoming year will demand that you embrace both adaptability and strategic innovation to remain competitive. To hold onto market share and get the most bang for your buck, you’ll need to make good use of forecasting and media mix modeling (MMM) to choose which channels are most relevant to your audience.
Here are three trends guiding our ecommerce media predictions:
Prediction: We’ll see higher ad costs across platforms like Meta, Google, and TikTok due to saturated demand.
Based on the collective data of 300+ Agital clients, cost per click (CPC) has increased 23% on Google Ads on average over the last four years, which is slightly less than Amazon’s CPC increase of 57% during the same timeframe. We anticipate the climb to continue along with the rise in the number of ecommerce competitors on the market.
In contrast, CPC on Meta has declined 37% since 2020 and is expected to continue to decline over 2025. YouTube’s CPC will continue to decline as well, already down 47% over the last four years.
Trend Insight: We’re noticing that demand capture platforms are seeing consistent increases in cost while AI ad formats are making it easier for brands to invest in demand generation across visual media platforms like Meta and YouTube. This will be a key component of strategy for successful brands in 2025. Those who can successfully invest a larger media budget in demand generation while keeping an efficient demand capture campaign structure will see exponential growth with an optimal media mix.
For example, at Agital, we bypass attribution-hungry platform data by using factual numbers to understand the true metrics that matter, such as your Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER)—how much you spend on marketing versus how much revenue you generate through marketing campaigns.
Prediction: Media budgets may tighten as inflationary challenges influence spending, forcing brands to allocate budgets more strategically.
Spending on various channels has increased over the last four years, according to our aggregated data from 300+ clients, with Amazon up an average of 36%, Meta increasing 13%, Google spend climbing 30% on average, and YouTube up 32%. The numbers indicate a shift by brands to invest more in Amazon Ads as more users go to Amazon first as a search engine, making it an essential platform for ecommerce success.
Trend Insight: Fueled by its partnership with TikTok, Amazon will continue to grow as a crucial part of the consideration stage of the buyer journey for consumers, with over 50% of online searches now starting on Amazon. Brands that don’t lean into Amazon will miss out on pent up demand.
Similarly, marketers will notice YouTube viewership is continually on the rise, creating a vital opportunity to garner brand awareness. YouTube should be considered among the top awareness-driving channels for ecommerce brands, right next to TikTok and Meta.wheel, expanding your customer relationships and leveraging them to help bring in more customers.
Prediction: Automation and AI will drive efficiency in media buying, resulting in more personalized and cost-effective campaigns.
AI bidding models in advertising will continue to pick up speed as an innovative media buying approach that serves ads to key target audiences at any point in the marketing funnel. Ecommerce teams are increasingly using it to cut out extra manual work and drive holistic results for ad campaigns.
Trend Insight: Savvy ecommerce marketers will focus on the inputs of AI—setting goals and fueling algorithms with topics, keywords, and creative to push AI to find our target customers—and use AI to make minute adjustments humans can’t make in real time.
The best advice for ecommerce businesses determined to grow in the shifting media landscape: Explore emerging platforms to diversify your media budget and mitigate rising costs.
Case Study:
An online fashion retailer was eager to understand how their ad spend across different channels was affecting their total sales. Agital used media mix modeling (MMM) to forecast and identify the brand’s ad spend potential and help them amplify their revenue while cutting costs.
For Agital’s MMM process, we run a regression analysis between two factual numbers—what you spent and what you generated in total (sitewide revenue). Our experts analyze the correlation between those numbers to understand the real impact each media investment has on your sitewide revenue to bypass in-platform attribution.
Focusing on marketing KPIs like marketing efficiency ratio (MER), cost per acquisition (CPA), customer lifetime value (CLV), and the ratio of CPA:CLV allows us to maintain a solid source of truth. That way, you only use in-platform attribution as a guide while focusing on the marketing KPIs that actually impact your bottom line.
As the new year advances, now is the best time to leverage forecasting analytics and media mix modeling to ensure you are putting your ad spend in the right places for maximum ROI. If you’d like help reviewing your options and crafting the perfect media mix to grow your business, contact Agital now. Our experts are happy to help!
